Introduction

Abstract

The introduction provides an overview of the key themes explored in the book, and contextualizes the topics analyzed in individual chapters. The authors argue that although gender has been a “central issue” since the colonial times, its visibility in the discourse of India’s popular culture increased manifold after the economic liberalization in the 1990s. By providing an overview of historical debates on gender in Indian context, the introduction claims that the arrival of neoliberalism during the 1990s not only transformed India’s urban middle class phenomenally, it also recast the “New Woman” following the demands of a global capitalist market. The authors argue that Indian millennial audience’s encounter with the concept of feminism via media and especially through cinema and content on SVOD platforms does not necessarily facilitate in the building of a feminist consciousness. At the same time, the on-going postfeminist celebration of “empowered” women in films and on digital media platforms diminishes the opportunity for a critical engagement with the politics of feminism. The introduction also discusses the rise of New Bollywood cinema and its impact on SVOD media, and interrogates the ambivalent mediated space between feminism and postfeminism through discussion of diverse representations of gender. The introduction also engages with the question of masculinity and LGBTQ+ representations in cinema and SVOD platforms.